Jewish Museum and Mauthausen

The Jewish Museum proved to be a great supplemental experience to our study of the Jewish community in Austria and our experience at Mauthausen. The Jewish Museum is divided into three parts and focuses on many different aspects of the history of the Jews in Vienna throughout the centuries. The content of the museum did not focus on World War II and the Holocaust as much as I expected, considering that was without a doubt the most notable event concerning the Jews in modern history. Although I have to say I was pleased with the variety of information, especially that on the Jewish community in medieval Europe. Often times, Jewish history is so dramatically biased by the memory of the Holocaust that there is little investigation of the anti-Semitism that existed in other points of European history. Perhaps the part of the museum I found most interesting was the archeological site at the Judenplatz for the remains of the synagogue that was constructed in 1401 . This exhibit combined with the section on the medieval ghetto surrounding the synagogue provided excellent information on Jewish life and anti-Semitism from many centuries ago. The Jewish community in Vienna during this time was both extremely large and extremely important, as it was a center of learning. The anti-Semitic ruler, Albert V, who expelled the Jews from Austria in 1420, victimized this rich cultural center. All Jews were ordered to leave the city without any of their possessions and 200 were publicly burnt alive. The event coincided with the destruction of the synagogue that would not be uncovered until 1995. The remains now allow the public to be exposed to valuable information on how the Jews lived in Vienna leading up to their expulsion.

The memory of the Jewish population and culture within Vienna is actually much more extensive than just a set of artifacts or information about Jewish history. The museum actually has three greater parts containing the Judenplatz, the Palais Eskeles, and the Dempfingerhof. The synagogue, or Dempfingerhof, offered a good scope for the evolution of the Jewish community in Vienna as this synagogue was very similar in function and value to the medieval synagogue, but this one operated in the nineteenth century. The Palais Eskeles was particularly interesting for how it corresponded to Ruth Kluger’s Still Alive and our trip to Mathausen as it pertained to the religion and memory of Judaism in Austria. The Torah crowns, Kiddish cups, and Esther scrolls in this exhibit that date back to the Habsburg rule are some of the most important and valuable collection of Judacia in the world. The greater issue of the memory of Jewish culture is one that pertains directly to our visit to Mathausen as it is one of the concentration camps from World War II that insights much of the memory of the atrocities of the Holocaust while Kluger attempts to critique the method in which the events are remembered.

Mauthausen was unequivocally the most powerful and moving experience of my time in Austria. Mathausen was a concentration camp designed for hard labor rather than a death camp where prisoners were brought simply for extermination. The hard labor at the camp revolved around the quarry where the prisoners had to bring gigantic stones, weighing approximately 160 lbs according to our tour guide, up nearly 200 uneven steps for either the initial construction of the camp or other tasks for the Nazis. The camp had mostly political prisoners, but also homosexuals, gypsies, and Jews. My term paper for the class will focus on this topic of the memory preserved at Mauthausen and in concentration camps in general so I will leave most of the details out of this blog entry. One of topic of the tour that I do want to investigate here is the message or warning at the entry of the camp, which translates, “Be Vigilant”. Here this message obviously applies to being vigilant in the prevention of genocide, but I think it also can have much broader implications than just for this instance. Central and Eastern European countries have often been victimized by government corruption and authoritarian regimes that have oppressed their people. While Hitler and the Nazi regime is probably the most prominent example, the oppression of the Soviet Union on the many countries is a similar circumstance. This message applies because it charges people to not just sit back and allow corruption to prevail and victimize people, but rather to always be actively checking government to make sure power is not being abused. This mindset and philosophy will not only ensure the prevention of genocide to take place as seen in the Second World War, but also discourage oppression in general whether it is political, social, or economic.